International Cat Speculators Since 2006

Posts tagged ‘Smacking Derangement Syndrome’

Whangaparaoa resident Arna Mountain was gathering signatures for the petition when two women, on separate occasions, started abusing her.

She says many people were eager to sign the two petitions, which ask ‘should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?’ and ‘should the government give urgent priority to understanding and addressing the wider causes of family breakdown, family violence and child abuse?’

She says she was shocked by what she sees as violent, anti-democratic behaviour.

“These petitions are asking for the democratic right to vote on what has been a contentious issue, but these two women seemed determined to intimidate the public and those collecting the signatures.”

She says the first woman took offence to the gathering of the signatures and started yelling.

How dare we smack our children, she shouted. Mrs Mountain says she then started telling bystanders to “roll up and sign the petition that allows you to abuse your children and then kill them, yes murder them, come on sign up.”

Later she was approached by another woman who asked if this was the petition to sign, then grabbed it, tore off the signed part and ripped it into pieces.

“The woman then took the clipboard which had other completed forms underneath and took off.

I called her to give back the clipboard and the legal document she had torn. She threw it across the entrance-way and yelled about how smacking children was wrong,” she says.

And that folks, is why this blog has tag called “Smacking Derangement Syndrome”.

Mrs Mountain says that while she is shocked at the intensity of the behaviour, there are obviously a few people who are mistaken about what the petition is about.

At last count, somewhere around 20% of the country…

“There are a few people who are completely unaware of the statistics that show that abuse and parental correction are completely different issues. No one in their right mind wants to abuse children. She says the vast majority of people are still against this law.”

They received 144 signatures in a two-and-a-half hour period in Whangaparaoa.

2.5 hours is 180 min – so that’s a bit less than one signature per minute. Not too bad.

A mother walked past the table this morning at the netball courts, she very indignantly stated “You shouldn’t be smacking children”. Then as she walked away and to everyone’s amazement her daughter asked “Then why do you smack me so often?” Another mother in the crowd heard this and appropriately responded “AH, A closet smacker”.

The double standard, hypocrisy, and the so called perceived moral high ground shown by this Anti-Smacker is bad enough, but sadly and worst of all is that this mother is probably losing her cool and is hitting in anger, poor child.

Sound a lot like the roumours about Sue Bradford. One wonders how much of the “beating” beatup is because anti-smackers assume that everyone else does what they do.

Craig then wonders:

Here’s the question, Why were the anti-smackers so well behaved entering the match and then very aggressive upon leaving?

Given the information above a “modern day evolutionary psychologist” may interpret this change in character as a result of being exposed to the aggressive nature of the game. They may claim something like “the aggressive actions witnessed in the game has aroused some ancient hunting gene” etc etc etc.They may also claim that the above reaction from the Anti-smackers validate the “Violence leads to violence” interpretation.

I think our second and third case scenarios give a better answer.

Another woman, on leaving yelled “YOU JUST WANT TO BEAT YOUR CHILDREN”. Tired of these false allegations I let her have it, I made sure I gave her everything and more, the same kind of misguided logic, a taste of her own medicine, I gave her my best and I enjoyed it. She was put in her place. I said, “Now look here Lady, I don’t know who you are but lets get your facts straight. You say all we want to do is beat our children, we can’t even beat the Rabbitohs”. The crowd roared with laughter.

Then another woman had a crack at us, I will not repeat her flowery vocab, it was not pleasant.

Clearly someone who knows exactly how to discipline, who can’t even maintain civility in public!

I was stunned, but then it happened. From the din of the crowd came a loud, drunken voice. It was heard by all. This man, even in his condition, summed up the situation better than Helen Clark on steroids. No one could argue with him and all agreed, he was right. This is what was said: “Now that’s a woman who was never hugged as a child”.

Quite. I know parents who smack, and they will tell you straight up that the most common interaction with their children is a hug, closely followed by a kiss.

I lifted this paragraph from the Herald‘s forums the other day. How many mistakes can you see?

…Changing the way we think about child discipline might be categorised as ‘humanist’ but there is little mention of it in socialist theory. Come on you lot, give it a try. If you read the “anti-smacking ‘ bill you will see that it removed the in court defense of ‘reasonable force’ for those cases that reached the court. However, if it got you inveterate smackers at least thinking about the issue then it has half way succeeded. It is strange how good parents that I know, who are members of a born again church, who hardly ever smack their children and certainly never beat them, are vociferously opposed to this legislation mostly I suspect because their pastors have told them, forgetting that the party had its birth in the Methodist movement, that the Labour government is nasty socialist and everything it does must be opposed. Crazy and hardly Christian really.

I especially love the part where he talks about parents who never beat their children who oppose this bill for some odd reason, and suggest that they read it.

Never seems to occur to him that

a) beating was already illegal

b) people might have read the bill, and know full well what it means, and that is actually the reason they oppose the bill

c) people don’t listen to their pastors very much

d) especially ones that tell them that a party is nasty, socialist or evil

e) even if that were true, that only accounts for a small fraction of the opposition

f) I wouldn’t be surprised if pastors supported the law more than the general public

g) the people who listen to their pastors like he suggest have been thinking about this issue constantly for the last decade at least

h) the Methodist reference isn’t helpful either, considering what that church gets up to these days!

Seriously, the “they followed the leader” defense never seems to get old, does it?

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